Anthony Arthur

I think it's essential to stress that I come at Upton Sinclair not as a social activist, like most who have previously written about him, but as a writer and a teacher of American literature. I've tried to address the various questions I've been asked about Sinclair, or that I think should be asked, in the linked Word document above, "Why Sinclair Matters," including how and why I came to write about him.

My career has always combined writing with reading and teaching--a bit like Sinclair's in that modest respect, since I think of him as a teacher. I attended Penn State for two years after graduating from Sharon High School, in western Pennsylvania, in 1954. I then spent three years in the army, during which I was trained at the Army Language School in Monterey, California (now the Defense Language Institute) for a year as a Korean linguist. After graduating from Allegheny College in 1960, I worked for a year as a newspaper reporter in southern Arizona. I returned to Penn State for my MA in English in 1961 and then worked as a business writer in New York.

I began teaching English at a community college on Long Island in 1964. In 1970 I got my Ph. D. in English at State University of Stony Brook, and took a position at California State University, Northridge, as it was renamed in 1972. During my academic career I was a Fulbright scholar in Hungary, an exchange professor in Germany, and Distinguished Visiting Professor of English at the U. S. Air Force Academy. I retired in 2002 to concentrate on writing full time. I’ve written four earlier non-fiction books, published by St. Martin's Press, and co-authored a book of essays about American history. All of these are described below.

My wife and I live in suburban Los Angeles—as did Sinclair. We have two children, a daughter who is an editor in New York, and a son who teaches middle-school English in California.

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